BODY & GLAMOUR
The camera facilitates a unique perspective on celebrity culture, on elegant
models in
haute couture
, and on the usually unseen human form. The book
provides an optimum context in which a body of work may be explored,
interpreted, exploited, and admired. Full-page bleeds of Richard Avedon's
emotive portraits and stylish fashion compositions; successive pages of Ruth
Bernhard’s classic studies of nude models, and graphic illustrations of Helmut
Newton’s sexy
tableaux
offer multiple ways to view the body.
An object of desire, the body is also a site upon which we might map psychological
inquiries. Anne Brigman’s atmospheric compositions are paired with her own
poetry. Pictures of Bruce Weber’s handsome, introspective models are arranged
in special sequences that form a narrative, while Bill Brandt’s distorted nudes
reflect ideas associated with Surrealism. Irving Penn’s long career photographing
celebrities and cultural icons, fashion models, as well as tradesmen and
indigenous groups, unite many of the various ways we depict and frame the
human form in book form.
Lot 249 (detail)
